How do you review an Olympics closing ceremony? I'm not sure you can, especially when it is a mix of pageant, pop-concert, street-party and presentation ceremony. Unlike Danny Boyle's opening ceremony, Kim Gavin's closing one had no hidden narrative but simply amounted to a kaleidoscopic spectacle based on what Gavin himself termed "a mashed-up symphony of British music".

It started somewhat weirdly with Stomp turning the London Eye into a vast percussion instrument and Timothy Spall erupting from the top of a mocked-up Big Ben to deliver Caliban's "the isle is full of noises" speech. And the isle certainly was full of noises as a celebration of the working day yielded the Pet Shop Boys parading in angular floats, One Direction performing on articulated lorries and Ray Davies stopping by to sing Waterloo Sunset. Not, I suspect, your average working day but still pretty extraordinary.

Perhaps the most inspired idea was to turn the entry of the national flags and the participating athletes of 204 nations into something unsolemn and informal. The competitors poured into the stadium, many of them coming down the audience aisles and then filling the gaps in the vast Damien Hirst Union Jack artwork that covered the entire surface. Far removed from the usual pompous parade of nations, it was democratic, cheerful and ever so slightly untidy; and you could see the joy on the athletes' faces as they jigged, jived, took snaps and even, in the case of a couple of Frenchmen, turned exhibitionist somersualts.

I leave it others to judge whether the big musical section was a fair summary of British pop over the past 50 years. But it certainly produced some eye-catching moments including a reconstituted version of John Lennon singing Imagine, Kaiser Chiefs backed by an assembly of leather-clad bikers, Annie Lennox standing at the prow of a skeletal ship with Gothic attendants and the Spice Girls emerging from a fleet of London cabs. We even got a tribute to British fashion with Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell and other supermodels clad in symbolic gold.

You can't really review a show like this. You can only describe it. But what emerged through all the smoke, strobe lighting and special effects was the energy of British popular culture over the past few decades and the gaiety of our Olympic ceremonies. What also strikes me is how much the Olympics has owed to British subsidised theatre. Es Devlin, who designed much of the closing ceremony, is a figure whose work is well known on British stages. Danny Boyle, who created the opening ceremony, once used to run the tiny Royal Court Theatre Upstairs. And Stephen Daldry, creative director for all the ceremonies, is a man I first encountered as a gangly youth in worn sneakers running the even tinier Gate Theatre in Notting Hill. Collectively, they have done a tremendous job in lending what might have been orthodox Olympic rituals a blast of theatrical vitality.